Pentagon Aided Prison Reform in Afghanistan?
The prison at the Bagram Air Base has been at the center of a great deal of controversy surrounding use of possible torture tactics and the 2002 deaths of two detainees at the hands of United States soldiers.
The revisions being called for by Maj. General Douglas M. Stone, are not the most groundbreaking of ideas, but if implemented, they could help curb the amount of Taliban trained extremists that come out of the notoriously badly run Afghan prisons.
Of course, with police busy singing and dancing how much could you expect from the prison system in Afghanistan?
“Throughout Afghanistan, Afghans are arbitrarily detained by police, prosecutors, judges and detention center officials with alarming regularity,” the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said in a report in January.
To help address these problems, Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone of the Marines, credited with successfully revamping American detention practices in Iraq, was assigned to review all detention issues in Afghanistan.
General Stone’s report, which has not been made public but is circulating among senior American officials, recommends separating extremist militants from more moderate detainees instead of having them mixed together as they are now, according to two American officials who have read or been briefed on his report.
Under the new approach, the United States would help build and finance a new Afghan-run prison for the hard-core extremists who are now using the poorly run Afghan corrections system as a camp to train petty thieves and other common criminals to be deadly militants, the American officials said.
The remaining inmates would be taught vocational skills and offered other classes, and they would be taught about moderate Islam with the aim of reintegrating them into society, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the review’s findings had not been publicly disclosed. The review also presses for training new Afghan prison guards, prosecutors and judges.
Pentagon Seeks Prison Overhaul in Afghanistan [New York Times]